Dental procedures often require a dentist and/or dental hygienist to work under numerous limitations, primarily among them being restricted physical access available for performing dental procedures within a patient's mouth and limited ambient light. For example, during dental procedures that employ high speed drills, the patient's mouth must receive the dental drill unit and a saliva ejection tube to evacuate particulates and/or saliva from the patient's mouth during the dental procedure, which typically requires the assistance of a another person, such as a dental assistant. In addition, again especially during dental procedures that employ high speed drills, the patient's tongue is at risk of injury if left unrestrained, which may also require the assistance of a dental assistant. Thus, the use of dental accessories, such as light sources, saliva ejection tube holders, and tongue suppressors, is occasionally required.
Further, dental procedures can also be lengthy. A patient's masseter, temporalis, medial pterygoid and lateral pterygoid muscles can become tired or sore when the patient's mouth has been open for long periods of time. Prior attempts to alleviate the fatigue that patients experience during dental procedures, however, tend to aggregate the limitations noted above and to further obstruct physical access to the interior of the mouth, interfering with the ability of the dentist or dental hygienist to perform certain dental procedures and limiting light. Further, some prior attempts to relieve fatigue were designed solely for the left or right side of the mouth, limiting their usefulness. In those devices that held a dental accessory, such as a saliva ejection tube, the dental accessary was also difficult to install and required the use of both hands or the complete removal of the device from the patient's mouth to attach and remove the dental accessory. In the case of saliva ejection tubes, such devices were further designed to hold but one type or size of saliva ejection tube and lacked the ability or hold different sized saliva ejection tubes. In addition, sterilization and reuse was problematic because of cracks and crevices in many prior designs.
Prior attempts to alleviate fatigue usually added further obstruction, limiting access for the performance of dental procedures and typically required the use of two hands or a dental assistant to attach or remove a dental accessary, such as a light source, saliva ejection tube holder, and/or tongue suppressor. Hence, a dental bite block assembly which overcomes these drawbacks would be advantageous.